Here
are some responses from the authors to selected passages from the Li Dzv-hou review
which is translated on a separate page.

Li:
"Although the Brookses do not use [postmodern]
language in their work, and indeed never use terms such as 'deconstruct' or 'essentialism'
- their methodology is traditional and not postmodern, and I expect they would
object to this inference - still, I think that, objectively speaking, this is
the case. Their work bears a great similarity to the recent, painstakingly postmodernist
work on Confucianism, Manufacturing Confucianism
by Lionel Jensen (Duke University Press, 1997)."

Brooks:
Dzv-hou is quite right; we do object to being
called postmodernists. We are premodernists. Our methods are those of standard
historiography. Dzv-hou in the same sentence calls us "traditional," and with
this we agree. We are traditional. Specifically, we are in the tradition
of Tswei Shu (to whom our book
is dedicated) and in the tradition of Gu Jye-gang (whose studies are alluded to
in our book's Chinese title). We see no excuse for Dzv-hou's admitting this, and
then proceeding to call us the opposite of what we are.

Lionel Jensen's book came out at about the same time as ours. This accident of
publishing history has tempted some people to see a linkage between the two. There
is no linkage between the two, and there is no common ground between the two.
We regard Lionel as a personal friend, but we differ from his methods (which,
unlike ours, can validly be related to some version of "postmodernism"),
and we disagree with his conclusions. Lionel finds "Confucius" to be
a construct of later centuries. We find Confucius to be a real person, buried
under an accumulation of later tradition, but capable of rediscovery. Lionel finds
that when you eliminate the later traditions, "Confucius" becomes less
and less definite. We find that when you strain out the later traditions, Confucius
becomes more and more real; more humanly and politically intelligible. These positions
cannot be equated. They contrast.

Li:
"However, 'going too far is as bad as not going far enough.'

Brooks:
We recognize the Analects quotation (LY 11:16). It implies that there is a right
amount of progress, somewhere in the middle between a little and a lot. But exactly
where should we have stopped in our researches, to avoid offending traditionally
minded readers? This comment gives no clue. We suspect that for Dzv-hou, the findings
of Tswei Shu were already way over the line.

Li:
"As for the Brookses' claim that they are able,
in their book, to work out correctly the sequence of dating, attribution to schools
and authors, and authorial intent, chapter by chapter from beginning to end, in
a textual tradition that is over two thousand years old: what appears, on a superficial
reading, to be an overwhelmingly persuasive argument is in fact weakly supported
by evidence and arbitrary in its conclusions.

Brooks:
Of this claim we look for examples. Instead we get a maxim:

Li:
If one can infer from one saying the date of an entire chapter, and show that
many chapters were directed against Mwodz, Mencius, Sywndz, Jwangdz, etc, then
this is indeed the case. . . "

Brooks:The general principle is that, unless a given late
passage can be shown to be an interpolation, it does indeed implicate the entire
chapter. And in many of the Analects chapters, the late signs are not single or
subtle, they are multiple and manifest. They swarm up in clusters. For example,
can any literate reader doubt that in LY 18:5, the Analects is in direct contact
with the Jwangdz, given that JZ 4:7 is virtually identical in wording, save for
the ending which, in the Analects, makes Confucius triumph over his Dauist critic?
Or that the next two passages, LY 18:6-7, are Confucianized rebuttals of equally
recognizable Jwangdz positions?

Also
to be somehow explained are the remarkable definition of rvn as the primary Mician
virtue ai "love" in LY 12:22, the commonality in wording between many
passages in LY 12-13 and the early Gwandz (including the famous saying that "the
father should be a father" in LY 12:11 but also, identically, in GZ 2:45-46),
and the striking similarity in content between the populist position adopted in
these two chapters and the populist position advocated in the interviews of Mencius,
beginning in 0320.

The Micians, the
Legalists as represented by the Gwandz, the Dauists, and the later Confucians
such as Mencius (LY 12-13) and the Sywndz who is satirized in the whole of LY
19, together comprise not some, but all, of the major players on the Warring
States intellectual scene. None of these other texts, or these advocacy positions,
existed in the time of Confucius. Their presence in the Analects can only indicate
later contact, of one sort or another.

But of what sort? It would seem to follow, either (1) that the Analects has been
strangely vulnerable to hostile interpolations from every other Warring States
advocacy faction, or (2) that its its proprietors have over the years creatively
engaged the rival political philosophies which challenged the Confucian position.
The hostile interpolation argument has been attempted. Waley managed to shrug
off the other linkages (not many people, after all, bother to read the Gwandz),
but he did acknowledge the Jwangdz connection in LY 18:5. He could not accept
its implication. He suggested instead that these Analects passages were hostile
Dauist interpolations. That theory collapses on being inspected. To quote from
our p183:

Waley
(Analects 21) sees 18:5-7 as from "a world hostile to Confucius." We
can follow him, up to a point. We can see the Dàuists sneaking up to Confucian
headquarters in the dead of night. We can see them jimmying open a window. We
can see them taking the Analects manuscript out of its drawer in the office desk.
We can see them writing anti-Confucian anecdotes into it. We can hear them chortling
as they vanish into the night. What we can't see is the scene next morning,
where Dz-shvn [the head of the Lu school as of this period] comes in, opens the
book, finds the Dàuist stories, scratches his head, mumbles, "Well,
yeah; I guess I must have," and calls the students in to memorize them. We
envision an earthier reaction.

This hostile intrusion theory, to put it as kindly as possible, is not Waley at
his most perceptive.

Not to see what
is going on, in these passages and in a host of other contact indications located
all through the Analects, is to fixate on Confucius and ignore everything else
we know about Warring States thought. It is not to recognize intellectual history
even when it rears up and bites you in the face.

Li:
Of course, traditional theories do acknowledge that
the Analects is not entirely a contemporary record, but was compiled from the
memories of various of his disciples, especially those of the second generation,
and is not without later interpolation, expansion, and emendation. They also recognize
that points in quite a few chapters are contradictory, inconsistent, or otherwise
difficult to understand. These facts are of course worthy of our continued consideration
and study, which in turn will no doubt be of great benefit to our understanding
of the formation of the Analects and of classical Confucianism itself.

Brooks:
The multi-disciple theory was how Jvng Sywaen, back
in the Han dynasty, explained away some of the more glaring inconsistencies in
the Analects. That theory is still popular with those who prefer not to address
the complexity of the text. But it has never been developed as a serious account
of how the text came to be; that is, it has never been examined as a theory.
In effect, Dzv-hou is here suggesting that the inconsistencies in the Analects
should be ignored by modern readers. The argument runs this way: (a) We, the scholarly
community, already knew there were inconsistencies, so it's no big deal. (b) And
we can take up the question of those inconsistencies sometime later on, in the
indefinite future. (c) So, for now, the received interpretation will suffice.

The future, by definition, never comes. After two thousand years of such postponements,
it is surely time that the admitted irregularities in this "seamless"
document were given serious attention. No?

Li:
On the other hand, if one reads the Analects in its
entirely with an unprejudiced eye, then, though it is not hard to find many areas
of contradiction, on the whole, whether in its thought, content, language, style,
ambience, or setting, the similarities outweigh the differences.

Brooks:
Having conceded, in general terms, the many inconsistencies
in the text, Dzv-hou is now arguing that the Analects is after all essentially
consistent. The idea that consistencies in a text can analytically outweigh its
inconsistencies is often applied to sacred texts like the books of the
New Testament, or to culturally central texts like the Chinese classics. But however
common, such assertions seem to us dubious. If there are inconsistencies, they
must somehow be explained. It's surely not required that a text should be inconsistent
at all points before that text will count,
for the analyst, as inconsistent. And additions to a text are very often made
in the original spirit of the text, by its original author or his successors in
proprietorship, to extend and not to refute its previous content. They are not
meant to obtrude; they are meant to blend in. Such sympathetic additions,
in effect extensions, whether by the first author or by the later followers of
a school founder, will tend as a matter of course to adopt the style of the previous
text. Nor should we ignore the probable wish of a school of thought to make its
new ideas seem at least reasonably compatible with its previous ideas. The consistencies
in a text thus find a ready explanation, whether that text was written by one
person, or took shape over time as the pronouncements of an ongoing school of
thought. The consistencies therefore do not eliminate the inconsistencies, and
the inconsistencies continue to require explanation. We have tried to be sensitive
to that requirement, in studying the Analects.

Li:
[The Original Analects], in line with recent scholarly
trends, thoroughly deconstructs the Analects and does away with the image of Confucius
as a Chinese cultural symbol.

Brooks:
Cries of "You're taking
Confucius away from us" have echoed in our ears since the first WSWG
Conference, back in October 1993. We are not taking Confucius away from anybody.
What people these days think of as "Confucius" is an overstuffed historical construct;
an emblem; what Dzv-hou calls a cultural symbol. That symbol has been constructed
by collapsing two centuries of Confucian philosophical evolution onto the historical
figure of its founder, and then by letting that already unreal result float free,
at the disposal of Imperial and later agendas. However cogent that "Confucius"
symbol may now be, it has only a tenuous relation with the historical figure;
the later tradition has long since ceased to possess the historical Confucius.
What we have done, Dzv-hou, is to dig the real figure out from under all that
later later piety and distortion, and give him back to you. And of this you complain?

Apparently,
as witness the next comment:

Li:
In this way, since the words of Confucius and his
disciples are seen largely as the creation of later tradition, 'Confucius' himself
no longer really exists - though we may be certain of his dates and ancestry,
'Confucius' is only a cipher.

Brooks:
The real Confucius, as revealed by our work, stands
at the head of a long line of Confucian ideological evolution and development.
But he himself is not at all a "cipher." He is a forceful man, and not less so
for being also a disappointed one. He was able to impart so
strong a momentum to his tiny group of none too prominent followers
that the movement thus begun continued for centuries to be a major part of the
intellectual life of the period, before it was finally distorted and co-opted
by other ideological currents under the Empire. That long persistence is a tremendous
achievement. Think about it.

No, really.
Think about it.

We invite Dzv-hou
and others not to hurry past page 19 of our book. Linger. Get a sense of the Confucius
who comes vividly to life in the sayings of LY 4, before the Analects and its
readers go on to engage other, and later, issues and problems. Here is an excerpt
from that page:

"The chapter seems to hint, tantalizingly
but vividly, at Confucius's early experiences. There are what look like echoes
of early hardship (4:5, 4:9), career opposition (4:3), and unrewarded loyalty
(4:8). At the end of that life, we feel in LY 4 the final Confucius: sonorous,
steadfast, consistent in his values, but unconcerned for logical rigor. He is
himself a locus of authority, and never cites texts, traditions, or models
ancient or modern. As is said of Jesus in Mark 1:22, the Confucius of LY 4 invariably
speaks in his own voice. His influence over his protégés thus derived
from his personal authority, not from his mastery of earlier traditions. The
Confucius we meet in LY 4 is above all immediate: here and now."

A
brave man, an original man, a man for the ages in his own time. There's
your universality.

Confucius, the real
guy, has been thoroughly trivialized by later ages' idea of him. Even the Confucius
of the later Analects is an increasingly cardboard figure; a dithering schoolmaster
who fusses over the length of his nightshirt (LY 10:5b) and blushes at the spicier
Shr poems (LY 17:15). His advice to his disciples (LY 17:8a) or even to his own
son (LY 16:13) has nothing of the character, the principle, the steadfastness,
the dedication, the inspirational quality, of the real Confucius. That advice
begins and ends with the suggestion that people should memorize a lot of supposedly
ancient writings.

And that is
the "Confucius" you want? Get real, Dzv-hou.

Postscript
2007

Confucius existed
in the past as a real and consequential person. That's important. The name "Confucius"
exists today as a pawn of cultural propaganda; virtually a synonym of "Chineseness."
That's important too, but as a separate fact, about a later age. Pushing the pawn
as part of cultural propaganda is the standard device of anyone who wants to bend
an ancient text into a sermon for the modern world. The rediscovery of the historical
Confucius, and his restoration to the modern consciousness, which is what our
book seeks to accomplish, does indeed somewhat undermine the practice of people
who are operating with the modern symbol as it has evolved. It's the old conflict
between what Waley called the "historical" and the "scriptural"
ways of looking at the same text. To that extent, Dzv-houj's feeling that our
work threatens his work is not without some foundation.

This
we cannot help. It is in the nature of things that the most pious of descendants
should be disconcerted when, at the ancestral sacrifice, the ancestor himself
suddenly appears out of the mists of the remote past, in his own guise and in
his own voice, denouncing opponents whose names posterity has all but forgotten,
and preaching virtues which posterity has long since lost.